Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Torrential Rains and Genetically Modified Insanity

The hollow-eyed pumpkins are still staring at visitors to our front door and a few brave flowers open their petals above the severely pruned garden. The Butterfly Bush is but a collection of woody stems aimed at the sky, while strategically placed yoghurt container-crowns circle the placement of future gladioli, in order to ward off the slugs of spring.

The scarlet runner bean house is but a pile of bamboo rubble, while on the back steps our malva issues forth yet another bloom to remind us of its former beauty. It’s time to move the garden indoors, except in the southern hemisphere, where Sara’s brother John and his wife Eloise are heroically struggling to start a much larger gardening operation than ours.

The Pineapple Express from Hawaii has brought us torrential rains here on Canada’s Wet Coast, so we fired off an e-mail to New Zealand—“How’s the weather Down Under, you guys?”

“The organic sector of New Zealand’s agriculture is growing by 20 to 30 percent a year,” came back the reply, “so John and I decided to go organic. We visited our favorite garden store and managed to find most of the Advanced Nutrients products you mentioned. The rest we ordered from their handy online store.”

“Our base fertilizers shall be Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, since we’ve been looking at your wonderful flower pictures, Sara, ever since May. We’ve also been convinced that Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice are necessities for our root systems, since the logic of using beneficial fungi, bacteria, and microbes to colonize them seemed crystal clear.”

“They not only aid the growth of our plants underground, but above ground as well. We administered these wonderful products during the first two weeks of planting. Then we'll replenish the soil with them at three-week intervals.”

“John is a firm believer in vitamins, so we decided on giving our corn, tomato, onion, cucumber and chilli pepper crops Organic B as well as Grandma Enggy’s Seaweed Extract. The first one has B-1, B-2, B-3, B-5, B-6, B-7, and B-12 as well as 3-unique yeast extract hydrolysates that help feed our plants these essential vitamins, along with proteins, peptides, free amino acids, lipids, minerals, trace elements and cytokinins.”

“This comes directly from John, who claims that it is by far the best plant vitamin in the marketplace. In addition to some essential Bs, Seaweed Extract also has Vitamin C, two vitamin A precursors, vitamin E, vitamin K, and other growth promoting substances. ‘It acts just like a multi-vitamin,’ says John.”

“You asked about the weather? Our late spring temperatures are fluctuating between 7º C at night and a max of 16º C in the daytime with a rainfall this past month of around 44mm. More rain is forecast for the coming weekend. Our UV forecast is very high at 8, so we’re asked to seek shade between 11am and 4pm.”

“If you remember, that famous hole in the ozone layer is right above Australia and New Zealand. We’re more worried about the accidental introduction of genetically modified corn into 94 fields on the South Island. As you know, we’re on the North Island, so it’s far enough away from us, but our government is opening the door to GMO agriculture, I’m afraid.”

“People are really afraid that the large agro businesses are going to be given the green light to bring their copyrighted seeds into our country then charge us when the wind blows them onto our property, like Monsanto did in Canada.”

“Right now only ten percent of growers are organic, but more and more are deciding that it’s the only way of the future. In five to ten years, 40 percent of New Zealand’s farmers have the intention of going organic. This is absolutely the right time to start growing pure foods, since the GMOs are contaminating the world’s food supply.”

“Our clients are willing to pay premium prices for certified organic produce, so we’re meeting the challenge of supplying them. Then during our winter we’ll be teaching our school children the importance of keeping our food supply pure. It’s up to the future generations to make sure that greed doesn’t triumph in the agro area.”

“A spokesperson against the introduction of GM organisms into N.Z. asked the rhetorical question—‘Have we as a society not learned anything from nuclear power and DDT, both of which have a half life. Genetic engineering does not have a half life, whatever effect it has will only be compounding.’”

Eloise promised to send us some pictures of their corn any other veggies. They’re growing a sweet corn variety, which seems to be a favorite with customers at the dining table. Organic corn is too expensive to feed to livestock.

We know that much of North American corn is susceptible to an insidious fungus, so we wrote back and suggested to them to inoculate their plants with the Potassium silicate of Barricade, and the induced systemic resistance of Scorpion Juice.

The latter contains a proprietary hormone-like substance, as well as a protein derivative, which help make your plants resistant to diseases—whether bacterial, fungal or viral, and pests of many different varieties.